New CD features historic recordings

By Jeff Green

Rare archival recordings spanning 64 years, 10 Mi’kmaw
communities and four provinces have gotten a new lease on life
thanks to the efforts of Memorial University’s Research
Centre for the Study of Music, Media and Place (MMaP).

For the first time, 24 tracks of traditional Mi’kmaw songs,
hymns, anthems and fiddle tunes are featured on the new CD
Welta’q: It sounds good: historic recordings of the
Mi’kmaq.

The disc includes recordings from Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova
Scotia, New Brunswick and Quebec from 1944-2008.

The album is part of the MMaP’s Back on Track archival series
which has been making rare and otherwise inaccessible music
available to the general public and educators since 2005.

The project was produced by ethnomusicologist Dr. Janice Esther
Tulk, a Memorial PhD graduate who currently is a Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) post-doctoral fellow at
Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia.

The album includes recordings from institutions across the country
and field recordings from private research collections. As well, it
includes a 60-page booklet written by Dr. Tulk that includes
textual and musical transcriptions, translations of Mi’kmaw
texts, extensive notes, photographs, and discography, and artwork
by Mi’kmaw artist Jerry Evans.

“The diversity of musical genres included on this CD
challenges any narrowly conceived notion of what Mi’kmaw
music is,” said Dr. Tulk. “Further, the inclusion of
the story of Mi’kmwesu – a flute-playing trickster in
Mi’kmaw culture – demonstrates the inclusiveness of the
Mi’kmaw concept for music. Welta’q means “it
sounds good” and can extend beyond music to other aspects of
expressive culture, such as story-telling performances.

“While many of the songs on this CD will be recognizable to
community members, and some even to the broader population, many of
these performances were not widely known during the consultation
process,” added Dr. Tulk. “By releasing them to the
public, we hope to preserve and celebrate Mi’kmaw culture,
while also providing historic source material to inspire future
generations of Mi’kmaq.”

Dr. Beverley Diamond, director of MMaP and producer of the archival
series, said the release of the CD helps preserve historic
Mi’kmaw recordings, making them available to everybody.

“Dr. Tulk has done a superb job of selecting and documenting
the archival material on this CD,” she said. “The range
of musical idioms and stories is an important record of the
interactions and intercultural connections that have been important
to Mi’kmaq people in Atlantic Canada.”

Funded by Memorial University’s Leslie Harris Centre for
Regional Policy and Development, the CD was produced with the
approval of Mi’kmaw Ethics Watch at Cape Breton University.
The recordings were digitized, edited and mastered by Spencer Crewe
of Memorial’s MMaP.